Jarret Loubser
Erik Sass, writer of The Social Graf, a Mediapost publication, says that in terms of bad PR, it doesn't get much worse than BP's continuing disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. First, an explosion that killed 11 employees - and a situation that got worse with the company's perceived complacency regarding the possibility of a spill; then reaching new lows with harsh criticism of the company's response and about to head even lower with a huge environmental disaster about to happen as the oil comes ashore in sensitive tidal wetlands and prime commercial fisheries.
"Obviously BP's first priority is stopping the torrent of oil coming from the ocean floor a mile down in the Gulf of Mexico; the second priority (pursued simultaneously) is containing the damage from the spreading slick on the surface. Next to these tasks, formulating a social media strategy might seem trivial, secondary, or even inappropriate - but as marketers and PR folks will tell you, this should have started the instant the disaster was reported to BP's management," says Sass.|
"After all, it's not like the company's marketing and PR staff can suit up to go help engineers and geologists stop the spill - but they can begin to contain and repair the damage to the company's image and reputation, already a fairly monumental task."
With a deluge of hostile Twitters and Facebook posts, among some 400 videos about the disaster on YouTube, social media experts believe BP's response has been hopelessly inadequate. Even though a US$14-billion oil slick probably still won't put the company out of business, public sentiment must be important somewhere down the line.
Another company that has come in for a beating on social media is Nestle. First, it was the company's dealings with Grace Mugabe in Zimbabwe and now - higher up on the international consumers' blast list - Nestle's supposed buying of palm oil from the Sinar Mas Group and the Greenpeace campaign to stop it.
Nestle UK published a press release assuring the public that it buys none of the 320 000 tons of palm oil it uses annually in various products from the controversial Indonesian Sinar Mas Group that Greenpeace asserts "is pushing already endangered orangutans to the brink of extinction and accelerating climate change".
In both instances, press releases are no longer enough. Nestle - once again - put someone on its Facebook site for a job "above their pay grade". It quickly became clear that public relations efforts via their social media platforms were only rubbing salt in the wound. The people charged with responding to posts - in both the Zimbabwe and the Greenpeace incidents - committed the first sin of online reputation management: Removed - or threatened to remove - comments they didn't like.
Here's some news, Corporates: You can't pretend people like you by deleting things they say about you. It's like putting your fingers in your ears and yelling "sticks and stones" . . .
Users reacted with everything from "arrogant", "naïve" and "WTF" to the condescending posts made by the Nestle someone who was clearly angry but uneducated in the ways of dealing with social media users.
Some say public reaction - live or online - won't really make a dent in the profits of the big corporates. However, social media reaction was enough for Nestle to release a statement on deforestation and palm oil on 30 April 2010, and promise to stop using unsustainable palm oil sources by 2015.
While the damage may not be measurable yet, wouldn't some sort of reputation management help to change the public's view of these large brands when things go wrong? Or is public sentiment no longer important to big brands? How did they get to be big brands in the first place? Public sentiment, perhaps?
In this issue: Read the academic view of online defamation; BrandZ 2010 top contenders; and Shelagh Forster talks about the challenges of outdoor advertising.
Enjoy!
Dianne
